The Best of the Best: Eight Essential Sam Neill Horror Movies

Sam Neill started out strong right out of the gate. In the first horror film that he starred in, he played the lead role as Damien Thorne, the Antichrist! It's pretty hard to get a part where you are more evil than that. Moreover, he played Damien with finesse and confidence that not many actors would have in an early role. The film is the third in a trilogy that began with The Omen, so there are a lot of expectations of the adult Damien. No worries, Neill gave him a presence and humanity with a complex portrayal that the role deserved.

In an equally strong portrayal, Neill played Mark, the husband of Isabelle Adjani's Anna, in Andrzej Żuławski's art-horror film Possession. It's an extraordinary film that is hard to pin down. What starts as a family divorce drama goes wildly out of control as Mark tries to control his wife and suspects she has a lover. Mark and the audience are unprepared for who this lover is and what Anna is doing. The plot involves doppelgangers and murder, with Adjani's feral performance and Neill's subtly disturbing turn collaborating to freak the entire audience out. With a horror resume that contains both of these films in one year, Neill makes his mark. Read more: The Best of the Best: Ten Essential Vincent Price Horror Movies.

Philip Noyce's Dead Calm is an Australian shocker about a bereaved couple, Rae and John Ingram, on a sailboat who make the mistake of trusting a man they find on a sinking ship, Hughie Warriner (Billy Zane). Neill isn't the bad guy in this movie, but he shows precisely how focused and capable he is, with only a glint of his trademark intensity coming out of his pale blue eyes. He's a strong presence in the film up against Zane's more flashy villainy.

Is Jurassic Park a horror movie? Yes, we think so, since it is a story about dangerous man-eating monsters who run wild on an isolated island. The dinos eat nearly everyone on the island, and even body parts fall out in front of the horrified characters. They all seem pretty scared to me. Jurassic Park is every bit a creature feature horror movie, like Jaws, Them!, or The Host. Sam Neill again plays the good guy but with his trademark intensity. That intensity comes out of his eyes when he's not paying attention, and he's a hero who saves as many people as he can from becoming raptor lunch. Read more: These 10 Amazing Effects From Jurassic Park Stand The Test of Time.

1994 brought Sam Neill's collaboration with the acknowledged master of horror, John Carpenter, which gave the world In the Mouth of Madness. It's a favorite among horror fans and Carpenter fans, usually the same people, for Neill's portrayal of John Trent, a freelance insurance agent caught up in a Lovecraftian evil that has come to Earth through the books of author Sutter Cane. Merely reading Cane's latest book, In the Mouth of Madness, drives people mad, and they mutate into monsters that go on killing sprees. After killing one such mutated human, Trent is put in an asylum, where he wakes up to find the place empty. It's an eerie tale, and watching Neill break into laughter after he realizes the truth of what is going on is terrifying. Read more: SDCC Exclusive: John Carpenter And Greg Nicotero Invite You To Chew Bubblegum And Meet Monsters.

Snow White: A Tale of Terror is a fantasy horror story based on the story of Snow White. This is one of Neill's roles as a good guy, and Sigourney Weaver plays the villain as Claudia, Frederick Hoffman's (Neill) second wife. Monica Keena plays Lilli Hoffman or Snow White. The gothic horror story replays the tale of Snow White but adds reanimation of the dead. Not only is Lilli the descendant of a witch, but Claudia becomes a sorceress to deal with the hurt she feels from being rejected by Lilli. All of the horror surrounds Neill's Frederick, and he has to be rescued by Lilli. That's a nice twist in this gothic interpretation of the fairy tale.

In the same year, Sam Neill goes from gothic terror to space horror with Event Horizon. The Paul W.S. Anderson film of a spaceship with an experimental gravity drive returns after seven years empty and seemingly haunted. A rescue crew only finds evidence of a brutal massacre and an otherwise empty ship. Sam Neill plays Dr. William Weir, creator of the gravity drive, who becomes possessed by the now sentient ship. The film was a failure upon release, but its legend has grown in the decades since, and fans still speculate upon the pursuit of the lost footage of the gory massacre onboard. Neill's Weir is a sympathetic yet horrifying presence. Yes, you can be both at the same time.

Daybreakers is finally our opportunity to see Sam Neill play a vampire; he is a vampire as a corporate criminal. He plays Charles Bromley, the head of a company that sells blood to vampires and plans to become wealthy from a blood monopoly. In the film, most of the world has been transformed into vampires, with only a few humans left alive. Lionel "Elvis" Cormac (Willem Dafoe) was cured of his vampirism through an accident, showing that a cure is possible, and his blood also heals vampires. Bromley refuses the offer of treatment for vampirism, choosing to keep the world as it is for his gain. The film also stars Ethan Hawke as Edward Dalton, who fights Bromley to cure the world.

In Backtrack, Sam Neill plays Duncan Stewart, the mentor of the haunted psychotherapist Peter Bower (Adrien Brody.) It turns out that Bowers is literally haunted by the victims of a train derailment who are seeking revenge for their deaths. All his patients are ghosts trying to get him to help them catch the real person responsible, who may also be a serial killer. Neill, as Stewart, tries to help Bower find out who really killed them and may have a secret of his own. Michael Petroni directed the film, and it also stars Bruce Spence.